This is the award-winning short story, The Gag Gift, touted (3rd place) as the best science fiction short story of 2011~~

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GAG GIFT BY LINELL R JEPPSEN It was beautiful day for a birthday party. Golden sunlight streamed in through the windows of the common room, and Mary Walker nodded her head in satisfaction. It was going to be a perfect birthday for old Artie Johnson. Artie was one of the lucky ones, she thought. His senile dementia was fairly severe, but he had long periods of clarity as well, unlike some of the other patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and other more dramatic psychosis’ who seemed to be lost in a woods of their own making, forever crying out to be found, to be saved.Well, never mind them. Mary walked briskly to the far wall where a long banquet table was set up for the party. Mary always liked to make sure that things were perfect for the patient's and their families. Sometimes the menus were all wrong; mixed up by the kitchen staff, although they had perfectly good records to go by, just like the rest of the staff. Like the one time ham was served to the Goldberg family. God, what a fiasco, she thought.Ah! This is a finger food party, she guessed. Bowls of potato chips, dips, rolled meats and cheeses. Safe, she thought, if a little ordinary. Moving to the next table, Mary saw balloons floating in the air…green, brown and black. Howstrange, Mary suppressed a sudden chill. Looking down, Mary saw the cake and let out a stifled gasp. “What is that?” she whispered. Lydia Humphries, one of the kitchen staffers, looked up, grinning. “Oh! Hi Mary, how do you like Artie’s cake?” Mary shook her head and said, “I don’t even know what it is…” Lydia laughed and said, “Join the crowd. Apparently, this is a trophy buck head, homemade by Artie’s daughter. I guess that the whole family is big on hunting.” Mary almost had one of her fainting spells, but she took herself in hand. “Well, it’s great to see the family gather around isn’t it? So many of these people…it’s so sad.” Mary and Lydia looked at the patients who had come for the party, some ambulatory, but most of them in wheelchairs. Many of them stared around as though they were not quite sure why they were there, and almost all of them were alone, given up for dead by their friends and relatives, although they all still breathed. Mary gave a last look at the strange birthday cake that looked like an upside down bat and moved toward the friends and family of Artie Johnson. Oh, good, Mary thought, Artie really is having a good day. Artie’s blue eyes twinkled and he laughed as he opened the many gifts piled around his wheelchair. So far it looked as though he had received a couple of pairs of wool socks, which was good, as Artie’s feet were almost always cold, an Elmer Fudd- style red and black checked hat with ear flaps, (where on Earth would he wearsomething like that, Mary wondered), and what looked like a subscription to a couple of magazines. Every time Artie opened one of the gifts, the whole family would chime in with a story. Mary was too far back to hear what brought on the occasional gales of laughter, so she carefully edged her way to the front of the crowd. “Would you look at this?” Artie’s voice rang with mirth. Mary bent sideways to avoid knocking Wilma Ferguson off her walker. Artie held something up to the light so that everyone could see, and suddenly the hospital’s alarm went off in Mary’s ear. **************** Beep, beep, beep. “Ah, man,” she mumbled. “I’m awake, already.” Mary’s husband, Jimmy, stuck his head around the bedroom door and grinned. “Good morning, sunshine. Here’s some coffee.” He handed her a cup as she sat up on the edge of the bed. “Now remember,” he continued. “When you take your shower, use the deer soap, okay? And no perfume or deodorant,” he added. Then he was gone and Mary blinked at the light streaming in from the hallway.This is ungodly early, she thought, as she stood up and walked into the bathroom. Turning on the light, she grabbed a toothbrush and sat on the toilet for a pee. Multi-tasking, she smirked. A few minutes later, she emerged from the bedroom, smelling faintly of dirt, with her husband’s camo on, and her hair tucked up under a camouflaged cap. Jimmy was a great believer in being where the deer were before first light. He scoffed at hunters who moseyed out at their own convenience, and then moaned when all the deer were long gone or bedded down for the day. That was why they were rumbling down the county road at five in the morning, in the dark. Jimmy figured, with the walk in, that they would be in place and ready to shoot at dawn. Mary had wanted to come with her husband for years, but had never had the time until now. She had arranged for vacation time from the hospital she worked at as an R.N., and as she followed her husband up the overgrown trail and into the woods she was thrilled to be alive, and in love. She was pretty much wide-awake when she suddenly became aware of a change in air pressure. She could also see that it was considerably lighter now, and that she and her husband’s shadows stretched off to the right and into a thicket. Mary looked down at her flashlight, shook it in confusion, and then looked at Jimmy. She was about to ask what was going on, but her words dried up as she noticed her husband’s stance. Jimmy was staring off to the left and down into a small clearing. That was where the light was coming from and Mary saw that there were a number of deer milling about. However, something was wrong… She glanced at her husband again and started to speak, but Jimmy put his finger to his lips in the universal sign for silence, grabbed her arm and pulled her down into a crouch. Mary was frightened. Not only at what she was seeing down below, which seemed bizarre and somehow wrong, as though her eyes were playing tricks on her, but at her husband’s demeanor. Jimmy was one of the mellowest people she had ever met, always steady, calm, and sure of himself. Now though, Jimmy seemed shaken to the core. Every muscle in his body was clenched, and Mary saw that sweat had popped out on his forehead and upper lip. Mary looked down into the clearing again. She was amazed to see a pair of young black bears moving around amongst the deer. She heard her husband’s gasp and bit back a cry of disbelief as she realized that there were coyotes as well, and chipmunks, birds of all sorts and even a wolf mingling with the deer and bears around what appeared to be a rainbow- hued cylinder that hovered about ten feet off the forest floor. There was an almost subliminal vibration in the air now and Mary realized that she must be seeing some sort of U.F.O. For a moment, she felt a sense of joy and gratitude that she and her husband Jimmy could witness something like this, something they had only laughed at and been entertained by in the past, through clever Hollywood special effects and certain science fiction writers. The brief euphoria faded however, as Mary felt the wrongness in what she was seeing. As she stared at the scene below, it seemed as though she could see through the animal’s bodies as they moved. It was as though they were all wearing camo, like her. Camouflage meant to trick the eye, to fool the observer into seeing what was not there, or more importantly, not see what was there. Mary could feel her husband’s anxiety and heard him start to hyperventilate. She glanced over and saw that while she was not looking Jimmy had donned his pair of night vision goggles. She had been annoyed when he had bought them from an Army/Navy surplus store, because they were expensive…almost eight hundred dollars and all scratched up. Mary felt that they were a big waste of money, and even Jimmy had seemed to realize his folly, but now, as he gazed through the old lenses, his mouth dropped open and he began to back away. “Jimmy?” Mary’s voice broke in fear. To her horror, she realized that her whisper had come out in a shout. She was watching Jimmy’s face as he backed away, and she could see the light and the animals reflected in the goggles lenses. She could also see that the animals had all turned, as one, at the sound of her voice and were staring up at where she and Jimmy crouched on the hillside. With an inarticulate cry of fear and rage, Jimmy suddenly stood up. “Get behind me,” he growled. Mary froze for a moment but then scrambled up and hid behind a tree. The animals were starting to move their way. They moved together in a group, feather and fur blending in to the surroundings, clawed paws becoming bark and twigs, feathered wings becoming branches and leaf. Mary could sense urgency now, as though the vibration in the air was a voice, a directive… Mary heard her husband chamber a round and then, BOOM! She peered around the bole of the tree, saw a deer collapse to the forest floor, and saw the other creatures pause and look down at their companion with what almost appeared to be shock. Vaguely, through the ringing in her ears, Mary heard another round chambered, and then she heard her husband cry, “Mary, run!” Boom! Jimmy’s .03-06 roared, and so did its owner as another one of the creature’s fell, this time a bear. Mary tried to run, but she paused, transfixed by what she was seeing. One by one, the creatures were shedding their camouflage. They were metal! No, they were lizards, metal lizards, with crests and talons and too many eyes, some on stalks, sprouting from the tops of their heads. They had huge under slung jaws, filled with teeth. They were huge, eight or nine feet tall. Jimmy was re-loading now and Mary could see that he was calm, determined. Mary was proud of him then and gazed at him for a moment with such love that she almost did not see when one of the monsters stopped and threw some sort of boomerang in their direction. Mary ducked and when she looked up it was just in time to see Jimmy’s body sliced into four precise pieces. It was like seeing a movie in slow motion. Jimmy’s head fell to one side; his upper torso fell to the other. The lower torso, and finally, Jimmy’s legs and feet fell neatly backwards, like bowling pins, almost in Mary’s lap. She stared at what remained of her husband and felt her mind begin to slip away. The creatures stepped close to where Mary lay in the mulch. She lay with her right cheek resting on the top of her husband’s right thigh, and knew that she was going to die, as she heard them whisper, squeak and hiss at one another. She wondered what they were talking about, and watched as one of them took some sort of bag out of its vest of metal and bent to gather up what remained of her husband’s body. She saw one of them pick up Jimmy’s left leg and almost cried out, No! Leave me something, please! However, some little piece of her rational mind kept her quiet. She understood that, for now anyway, she was invisible to them. One by one, Mary saw them drift away, back down the hillside. They donned their camouflage, as they went, becoming deer, bear, coyote and chipmunk. Finally, there were only two left. Mary watched as one creature flung the sack containing her husband over one shoulder, while the other swung Jimmy’s head by the hair, like some sort of ghastly bowling ball. Hissing quietly, the two moved down the hillside, into the clearing and disappeared into the cylinder. Mary watched the clearing below as the animals did a sort of dance or ceremony. Then she grew so tired she laid her cheek on the ground and slept. As she slept, Mary dreamt about her husband, and had many visions about Alice in Wonderland, where she, herself was Alice, and the animals talked and sang. She dreamed this dream for many days and weeks and when she finally woke up, she was back in the hospital where she worked, and cared for people who had psychological problems. That she herself was one of the patients never occurred to her. The staff at the Music-Ward mental hospital were content to let her live out her fantasy of being a nurse, as long as she remained stable and posed no threat to the other patients. She was sweet really, and the staff loved her and felt so sorry for her misfortune. Apparently, many years earlier, Mary and her husband Jimmy had become separated while hunting up in the Saddleback Mountains. A log truck driver had found Mary wandering down the mountain in a daze, babbling nonsense about aliens and animals and camouflage. Jimmy had never been found. It was tragic. That, however, was why the staff had gathered in the conference room today. Surprisingly, Mary Walker had suffered an extreme setback just this morning, and at the Johnson birthday party no less, to the dismay of everyone in attendance. Five of the patients had to be sedated, including Artie Johnson. The mess Mary made of things was unbelievable. The accounting department was not going to be happy either. The hospital would have to reimburse the family and friends for many of the gifts Mary had ruined, including a cake, a number of clothing items and a figurine. The director shook his head. What was it about that silly figurine that set off one of his prize patients that way? It was only about six inches tall and showed a deer with a rifle, wearing hunter plaid with a human man slung over its shoulder. He had seen one just like it in a Cabela’s store once, and thought about buying it for his nephew, who was an avid hunter. The director sighed, shaking his head. The human mind was a strange and wondrous thing, but sometimes so bizarre in its constructs as to be almost alien. THE END